Planning consultants are increasingly hired to organize citizen participation processes for urban development projects. However, the ways in which planning consultants engage in and perceive the involvement of citizens in urban development projects remain relatively understudied. This article opens the black box of consultancy employees' perceptions toward citizens in urban development processes. Employees from two consultancy firms in the Netherlands were interviewed, and several focus groups were organized. This research shows that consultants have wide-ranging views concerning the ways of incorporating citizens' interests in urban development projects. With the use of Q-methodology, a typology of how consultants engage with citizens is proposed. Furthermore, we show that the different perceptions of consultants lead to a different approach in identifying the needs and problems of citizens. This finding gives insight into the context in which decisions about urban development are made.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.